There are many types of dental and medical instruments which are connected to or adapted to be connected to relatively long appendages such as air and water hoses, electrical cords, fiber optic cords, and the like. Examples of such instruments are air and water syringes, high and low speed hand piece drillers, ultra-sonic sealers, fiber optic wands, ultra-violet or visible curing wands and the like.
With all of these types of instruments, there has been a need for a packaged sanitary drape that can be easily installed on the instrument and its appendage without contaminating the instrument, appendage or outer surface of the drape. The problem has been the cumbersomeness in handling an elongated drape which may be 3 or 4 feet long while placing it on the appendage especially without contaminating the drape with the bacteria from the operator's hands or which may "fall out" from the appendage.
The only drapes known by me for enclosing dental or medical equipment is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,528,720 and 3,698,791. In both of these devices, sack-like envelopes of flexible material are provided for completely enclosing a microscope and its support structure. These two drapes are primarily directed to the specific requirements of a microscope, i.e., the handling of heat generated by the illuminating lamp of the microscope and means for covering the objective lens of the microscope. Both of such prior art devices fail to provide any convenient means for draping the cover over the microscope and its support. Further, neither of such devices provides any concepts for quickly and easily covering an instrument and its appendage such as a flexible hose, cord or the like which is several feet long. Also, although such devices disclose sterile packages, neither of such devices provide a compact packaged drape that is kept sterile and can be easily and quickly manipulated to perform its covering function.